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You went from "Child porn is not really a hazily defined legal gray area." to "Anything that vaguely smells of child porn is no longer allowed." Do you see t

by dodedo 15y ago

You went from "Child porn is not really a hazily defined legal gray area." to "Anything that vaguely smells of child porn is no longer allowed." Do you see that "anything that vaguely smells of X" is the very definition of a grey area? For example, is this a problem? http://www.reddit.com/r/toddlersandtiaras http://www.reddit.com/r/toddlersandtiaras The reddit announcement was very clear: They have always banned child pornography. They even linked to the guidelines they use to do so: http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?PageId=1504 http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PageServlet?P... What happened today was not reddit banning child pornograpy -- it was reddit banning non-child-porn content which was overwhelmingly unpopular.

Czarnian 15y ago
Those two statements are not contradictory. The first is a statement of fact about the state of what constitutes child porn. Look up the statutes yourself. The link to the relevant wiki has been peppered throughout this thread. The second is a statement on the policy reddit has introduced. Reddit has not always banned legally defined child pornography. They've banned obvious child pornography. The kind with naked kids and actual sex. Their refusal to remove other images that, at best passed the test in the same way a D- is not a failing grade, has far more to do with their ignorance of what the law actually says and no one holding them accountable for a long time. As far as the non-child-porn content, I'm in no way upset by these particular degenerates no longer having that avenue of access to their fap material.
- dodedo 15y ago
  This is quite simply false. Reddit has always banned child pornography. The post we're discussing is quite clear on this point. There would be absolutely no outage if this was about banning child pornography. Your statements here seem to come from a place of rage and hate moreso than rational analysis, so let's not continue this.
- potatolicious 15y ago
  > "I'm in no way upset by these particular degenerates no longer having that avenue of access to their fap material." The banning of today's subreddits didn't bother me very much. The proliferation of comments like these, on the other hand, have. "Degenerates" is a favourite word of, well, just about every bigot out there. It also bothers me that we've made lepers out of pedophiles, and makes me wonder if we've done more harm than good in the long run. I'm against child porn and child exploitation, I am however adamantly against the marginalization and dehumanization of pedophiles. > " Look up the statutes yourself." The defining line is the Dost test, which is far from concrete. If I educated 100 randomly selected people in the US on the Dost test, and then gave them each 100 images to classify, sourced from the abovementioned subreddits, what sort of agreement do you think we'd get? Would it even come close to a consensus? Something that is codified doesn't mean it's not in a legal grey area. As a photography enthusiast this issue has come up more than once. You may or may not know this - but there are groups on Flickr that cater to just about every fetish and kink out there, and group moderations can "invite" an image to be added to the group's galleries. Yes, some of these involve children. I've gotten requests in the past for perfectly innocent (in my mind) images to be added to these groups. A woman sitting casually wearing hosiery is suddenly fap material to a whole boatload of people. A child playing in the park is suddenly wildly arousing for someone else. I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that child porn, like any other fetish, is more in the eye of the beholder than anything else. There are also substantial slippery slope concerns. It bothers me that so many have chosen to sweep these under the rug because the word "slipper slope fallacy" exists, and saying it will somehow make these concerns null and void. After all, we are seeing calls to shut down (IMO equally reprehensible) subreddits like /r/deadbabies and /r/beatingwomen - of course, sheer legality won't help us here, as these are legally even more poorly defined than child porn. There are also complaints that /r/gayteens (not sure if I have the name correct) got shut down despite holding themselves to a strict 18+ moderation... the responses to which simply derided people for being attracted to teenaged gays. In any case, this is anything but a clear-cut issue.
  - pjscott 15y ago
    I regret that I have only one upvote to give you, because you just wrote the most insightful comment I've seen on this issue.
- cgoddard 15y ago
  I think Reddit is on the right track, but needs to go a little further. To effectively protect children from predators, we need to stop allowing any depiction of children (either real or cartoon) in media, because i bet there are degenerates out there that will use any pictures of children they can get their hands on to masturbate with! I think child sexual abuse and exploitation of any sort is despicable and should be given zero-tolerance, just as any sexual thoughts about children should also be illegalized. As we now know, all pedophiles are predators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Pedophilia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Pedophilia), and need to be locked up to protect society! Alarmingly, between 3-9% of the current general population are likely pedophiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Prevalence_and_child_molestation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Prevalence_and_child...), and those who haven't molested a child yet will do so soon! People who commit sexual thoughtcrimes about children are monsters, and need lots of psychiatric drugs and therapy to either change their sexuality or just stop it altogether. If that doesn't work we really need to get these people off the streets and into mental institutions permanently ASAP, just as soon as they confess they have these thoughts to a mental health professional (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Civil_commitment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Civil_commitment) Some religious researchers out there that have made significant progress in curing gayness in some people, and we should be able to use the same techniques to cure pedophilia, at least for those that want to be helped. And just as we now know that watching rape porn and reading rape erotica are a gateway to real-life rape, lolicon and erotic drawings of children are a gateway to child abuse, so it's a good thing those have also been illegalized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act)! Imagine, some pedophilia advocates have tried arguing that fantasy and drawings don't harm anyone, when they so obviously cause future crimes by legitimizing deviant sexuality. If we can institutionalize this mere 1/20 to 1/10 of the world population, and hopefully cure them so we don't have to keep them locked away forever, our children will be safe again, from all actual and possible crimes. Taking such hardline stances will hopefully also make the next generation of youngsters think twice before they choose to become attracted to children themselves during puberty.

by dodedo 15y ago

Czarnian 15y ago

Those two statements are not contradictory. The first is a statement of fact about the state of what constitutes child porn. Look up the statutes yourself. The link to the relevant wiki has been peppered throughout this thread. The second is a statement on the policy reddit has introduced. Reddit has not always banned legally defined child pornography. They've banned obvious child pornography. The kind with naked kids and actual sex. Their refusal to remove other images that, at best passed the test in the same way a D- is not a failing grade, has far more to do with their ignorance of what the law actually says and no one holding them accountable for a long time. As far as the non-child-porn content, I'm in no way upset by these particular degenerates no longer having that avenue of access to their fap material.

dodedo 15y ago
This is quite simply false. Reddit has always banned child pornography. The post we're discussing is quite clear on this point. There would be absolutely no outage if this was about banning child pornography. Your statements here seem to come from a place of rage and hate moreso than rational analysis, so let's not continue this.
potatolicious 15y ago
> "I'm in no way upset by these particular degenerates no longer having that avenue of access to their fap material." The banning of today's subreddits didn't bother me very much. The proliferation of comments like these, on the other hand, have. "Degenerates" is a favourite word of, well, just about every bigot out there. It also bothers me that we've made lepers out of pedophiles, and makes me wonder if we've done more harm than good in the long run. I'm against child porn and child exploitation, I am however adamantly against the marginalization and dehumanization of pedophiles. > " Look up the statutes yourself." The defining line is the Dost test, which is far from concrete. If I educated 100 randomly selected people in the US on the Dost test, and then gave them each 100 images to classify, sourced from the abovementioned subreddits, what sort of agreement do you think we'd get? Would it even come close to a consensus? Something that is codified doesn't mean it's not in a legal grey area. As a photography enthusiast this issue has come up more than once. You may or may not know this - but there are groups on Flickr that cater to just about every fetish and kink out there, and group moderations can "invite" an image to be added to the group's galleries. Yes, some of these involve children. I've gotten requests in the past for perfectly innocent (in my mind) images to be added to these groups. A woman sitting casually wearing hosiery is suddenly fap material to a whole boatload of people. A child playing in the park is suddenly wildly arousing for someone else. I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that child porn, like any other fetish, is more in the eye of the beholder than anything else. There are also substantial slippery slope concerns. It bothers me that so many have chosen to sweep these under the rug because the word "slipper slope fallacy" exists, and saying it will somehow make these concerns null and void. After all, we are seeing calls to shut down (IMO equally reprehensible) subreddits like /r/deadbabies and /r/beatingwomen - of course, sheer legality won't help us here, as these are legally even more poorly defined than child porn. There are also complaints that /r/gayteens (not sure if I have the name correct) got shut down despite holding themselves to a strict 18+ moderation... the responses to which simply derided people for being attracted to teenaged gays. In any case, this is anything but a clear-cut issue.
- pjscott 15y ago
  I regret that I have only one upvote to give you, because you just wrote the most insightful comment I've seen on this issue.
cgoddard 15y ago
I think Reddit is on the right track, but needs to go a little further. To effectively protect children from predators, we need to stop allowing any depiction of children (either real or cartoon) in media, because i bet there are degenerates out there that will use any pictures of children they can get their hands on to masturbate with! I think child sexual abuse and exploitation of any sort is despicable and should be given zero-tolerance, just as any sexual thoughts about children should also be illegalized. As we now know, all pedophiles are predators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Pedophilia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Pedophilia), and need to be locked up to protect society! Alarmingly, between 3-9% of the current general population are likely pedophiles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Prevalence_and_child_molestation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Prevalence_and_child...), and those who haven't molested a child yet will do so soon! People who commit sexual thoughtcrimes about children are monsters, and need lots of psychiatric drugs and therapy to either change their sexuality or just stop it altogether. If that doesn't work we really need to get these people off the streets and into mental institutions permanently ASAP, just as soon as they confess they have these thoughts to a mental health professional (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Civil_commitment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#Civil_commitment) Some religious researchers out there that have made significant progress in curing gayness in some people, and we should be able to use the same techniques to cure pedophilia, at least for those that want to be helped. And just as we now know that watching rape porn and reading rape erotica are a gateway to real-life rape, lolicon and erotic drawings of children are a gateway to child abuse, so it's a good thing those have also been illegalized (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_Act)! Imagine, some pedophilia advocates have tried arguing that fantasy and drawings don't harm anyone, when they so obviously cause future crimes by legitimizing deviant sexuality. If we can institutionalize this mere 1/20 to 1/10 of the world population, and hopefully cure them so we don't have to keep them locked away forever, our children will be safe again, from all actual and possible crimes. Taking such hardline stances will hopefully also make the next generation of youngsters think twice before they choose to become attracted to children themselves during puberty.